


That was our chance

by failsafe



Category: Leverage
Genre: Anxiety, Bonding, Character Development, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 15:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6571816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker realizes they can't keep doing this alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That was our chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy your gift! I think I ended up drawing mostly from the idea of "figuring out polyamory" that you mentioned in your prompt. I guess this is probably most read as something at the very beginning of a poly relationship or them realizing that it's what they want. I just kind of let Parker take me where her voice led when I decided to use her POV. I also tried to explore how Parker's neuroatypicality might affect her in a position of leading Leverage after the show's end. 
> 
> Thank you for your prompts, and I hope I fulfilled this one well.

 

The first time something goes wrong on her watch, for just a second, Parker can't believe it.

It isn't stubbornness or even pride. 

She just can't believe it. 

The high-pitched sound in her earpiece might have addled her senses, but usually her senses aren't like that. Usually, she can adjust. She can always cinch the rope in time, she can always hide before someone sees, she can always run fast enough. 

Only this time, that isn't all that's on her. 

“Eliot?” she asks. She feels her lips slide together, too soft and smooth beneath the coat of deep red lipstick that starts to feel like she has painted herself with something that is going to make it impossible to get away. Her heart beats faster in her chest, and normally that's a good thing. The rush of adrenaline, the shot of coffee in her veins – it was part of why she ended up doing any of this, why she ended up staying with it. On a good day, it could feel like flying. 

Today is turning out not to be a good day. 

The first bad day of their new run. It had to happen sooner or later. The part of her mind that never heats up knows that, like one of the computer parts that Hardison blasts fans at all day, making it so cold that she can't touch it or even really sense anything about it but its incessant working hum. A part of her mind is like that, and she wonders if that is why Alec likes her. Only now isn't the time. 

The part of her mind that does that, the most familiar part of her that has stayed the same through all this, falters. 

“... Eliot?” she tries again, her voice going lower, taking on the edge of a scold. He has to answer her. She will not tolerate anything less. 

“Babe?” She hears a reticent answer that only just barely avoids a stammer. 

“Hardison,” she breathes, catching the full height and depth of that name in her throat. No matter what names she has learned to call him by through the years – _'Alec,' 'baby,'_ or any name she has ever pretended to know him by – the fullness of this name is the one she needs right now. The first name she knew him by, and the one that reminds her where they are right now, that this is a job. 

“That sound came from his end,” Hardison tells her. 

“I know,” she says, trying not to sound too impatient, but she needs to be impatient. “Do you know what it was?” she asks, remembering that it is her job to ask all the questions now. 

“No, but I think... it coulda been an accident, but I think that it might be a high frequency sound generator. Wouldn't transfer through the earpieces the right way, but it might come close...” Hardison begins to ramble. She can hear him reading, going through screens as he talks. She knows what it looks like, and she closes her eyes and almost sees it for a second. But then she is moving, hearing heels she hates clicking on a hard floor. She feels like she is wearing Sophie's shoes, looking around for someone, anyone to go to, to make them do as she says, to make them make sure Eliot is okay. 

“Why, Hardison?” she bites out, keeping her responses short and inconspicuous as she moves back into an area where there are people. 

“That's what's weird. I mean, that sound was loud enough for all of us to hear, but high frequency sounds are something you lose sensitivity to as you get older. That's why kids use that mosquito ringtone that even I can't hear,” Hardison explains. 

“What are you trying to say, Hardison?” A gruff voice coming through her earpiece now, and she stops so quickly she almost skids on the heels. She feels the way she had before she learned to wear them like this. 

“Eliot,” Parker says. The relief she feels flood her body, from its center outward, almost makes her feel guilty. “Location, now,” she snaps, trying to make up for it. 

“I'm in a parking garage. I _know_ I didn't blow my cover,” Eliot says, and she can practically feel him looking for a tire to kick. “But there was something – no big black van or guys with guns. Just this... thing... that dropped out of nowhere. You remember that time with the frat boys? Think it was worse than that. I'm pretty sure it did something to my earpiece, but it might have just been my ears.” 

“What was that, man?” Hardison asks. He also sounds shaken up, but the interest in his voice is something he doesn't even try to hide. She wants to snap at him for a second, but there is a crowd of people she has to politely smile her way through, and the impulse passes. 

“It was just like a... box. For a second, I thought I'd had it when I was right up on it. Thought it might be a bomb of some kind, but it just made that sound. An awful sound. My ears are still ringing,” Eliot says, muttering the last complaint like he would never want anyone else in the world to hear it. 

“Somebody's using sound as a weapon?” Hardison asks. 

“It makes sense,” Parker interjects, about to explain their mark again, in case Hardison has forgotten. 

“I'm just saying—” Hardison continues. She can hear him almost start to laugh from where he is stationed his van. She thinks that it might be one of those things she had never wanted to understand in other people. She thinks it might be his relief that Eliot isn't dead, that Eliot can still answer him, that makes him go on like this. “If we're using sound as a weapon, next thing I'm calling is superheroes. Well, supervillains. Since we're the good guys,” he adds, clearing his throat. 

“Not now,” Parker snaps, somewhere between an order and a plea but leaning toward the authority she know she has to have. Her hand clenches, and she hopes no one notices as she tries to make for the main floor and its doors. In this building, the elevators are uselessly slow. 

“Could get you one,” Hardison says. “Call you Black Canary.” 

“I am very serious,” Parker bites out through her teeth, the same way Eliot does sometimes. She needs to see him. She needs to see them. And they need to regroup, because she knows that this means that someone is on to them. They need to know who and why. “Where are you?” 

“Right where you told me to be,” Hardison says, much more obediently. 

Parker stops progressing toward the main doors long enough to circle around on a section of old, reddish and ornate carpet. Even the faint padding beneath her heels feels like some kind of grounding as she takes out a phone and searches for something perfectly innocuous on it. At least, looking up restaurants in the area would be to anyone else. 

“We've gotta meet somewhere else,” she says. “Drive,” she orders. When she is sure Hardison has had time to shuffle and pack up, she keeps walking, clearing her throat to speak. “Eliot?” she asks, her voice much more gentle than it ought to be as she confers with him about meeting places. They have to regroup.  
  


\- - - 

 

The fact that they are all sitting together in a darkened, safe, surprisingly clean hotel suite does not sit well with her. Getting them all back in one piece was too easy, for a first-time-gone-wrong job. She sits in front of a coffee table that looks like a cheap, hard plastic imitation of black marble. She is folded up in a shape that feels so much smaller than Parker standing up on high heels, than Parker the mastermind, Parker the leader. 

She is a thief. 

And just for a second, she feels a little bit like she stole the game from Nate too soon. 

She fidgets, staring at the poor reflection of her rubbing thumb in the coffee table. She is aware of Eliot sitting on the sofa above her, and being somewhere below him so casually makes her shoulders tense. 

“It's too clean,” she comments, her voice sounding more like a little girl play-acting at being tough and strong. She hardly recognizes the sound herself, and she wonders if Nate would think it almost sounds like she is mocking him. 

“What do you mean?” Eliot asks. His voice is low enough to show that he is hearing pretty normally again. 

Parker turns her head anyway to look up at him. She can hear Hardison over at the coffeemaker, Hardison over at the desk, Hardison making sure they have something to eat. She isn't hungry. 

“Why are you here?” she asks, and this time her voice is weak and tight in her throat, the way it should be when she had just _known_ that... 

“What?” Eliot asks right back, frowning a little. “Am I not supposed to be?” 

She doesn't know why he sounds a little hurt. Suddenly popping up onto her feet, she perches on the edge of the sofa and turns to face him, a knee drawing up between them. 

“No,” she says, and she reaches out for his forearm. It feels a little less familiar than reaching for Hardison, but when she feels the strength and the crisscross of the hairs on his arm – different but familiar – she knows that it is okay. “No, I want you to be. It's just... what I want and what makes sense aren't the same thing. I'm... not sure why someone didn't... _take you_ or _hurt you_ or _kill you_ if it was that close. I messed up, and somebody knows... Somebody knows, but you're still with us. And I'm... glad about that, but I know it means something is wrong.” 

Eliot's eyebrows lift up and then he curtly nods. His eyes flit down, and she can't tell if he is looking at her hand because he would like her to move it or if he is just noticing that she is holding onto him, that she won't let go. She can't let go. Not right now. 

“Yeah, I mean... I get it. You're right,” he says. She thinks maybe he regrets that she knows. He is always trying to protect them from things he knows, from things he's done, from things he is. She knows he can't forever. 

“So what do I do about it?” Parker asks abruptly. She looks at Eliot, then back at Hardison as he carries paper wrappers and plates toward the coffee table. His steps become a little more cautious when he sees her face. 

“Parker,” Hardison says, quickening again so he can empty his hands and sit down beside her. He reaches out for her shoulder, his touch steady and reassuring. “You've got this, okay? Something weird is going, but we'll figure it out.” 

“What if I can't?” Parker asks. She remembers the way Nate would go off alone, the way Nate would drink, the way Nate would shut all of them out until he figured it out. She knows that she should be able to do the same thing, but sitting between them, the only thing she can think about is how she can't let them die. She can't let them. 

“We'll figure it out,” Eliot repeats, nodding at Hardison over her shoulder. 

She knows they're looking at each other, and she ducks ahead. She is almost ashamed, trying to make herself small again. She had known she was going to have to do this. She had known that she was going to have to make calls she had never made before. She just hadn't known that the adrenaline wouldn't help anymore. She hadn't known it would make her feel like she was trembling and cold instead of strong and ready. 

She hugs herself, leaning against her knees. Then, with her eyes on a hamburger wrapper, she blinks a few times and says something before she can change her mind. 

“We can't do it like this,” she says. 

“What...?” Hardison asks, and she can hear the fear in his voice. She knows she must have made it sound final, like the end of something, but it is. She knows that it is the end of just the three of them, but it is something she has to do. She has to keep them safe, and she can't be Nate and Sophie at the same time, all the time. She is Parker, world-class thief, and she is Parker, mastermind, and she is Parker, a begrudging grifter. Only, she can't be all three at once. 

She glances back over each shoulder, up at them only long enough to catch their eyes. Then she straightens her spine, focusing forward and past both of them. 

“This is it. Our last job totally on our own. Unless... Unless I _know_ exactly what we're up against, it's too much. I mean... I mean it's _not enough_. I can't let both of you get hurt. I can't let either of you get killed because I'm trying to do three things at once. I can't—” She realizes that her breathing is getting faster as she talks, but then she feels Hardison's hand gently pat her knee with a slow, predictable rhythm. She slows down, her eyes falling closed. 

“The three of us... we _are_ Leverage. It's... It was the five of us, right? But we... talked about it. The night we decided this was how we were gonna do this, we talked about people all over the world. 'Leverage International,'” she recites, working through it in her head. “But so far, what we've been doing – it's just been the three of us. And I like it that way... but that's why it has to stop.” 

“Parker, do you want... us to split up?” Eliot asks. She tries not to hear the anxiety in his voice because she knows he doesn't want her to hear it. She looks at him, confidently. 

“No,” she says, like an order. “This doesn't change. The pub doesn't change. _We_ don't change. We just... have to have a team that isn't... just us. Just... our—” And she doesn't quite know the right word. She feels Hardison breath beside her. 

“... Just our people. Our family,” Hardison says, and she nods with relief letting a breath go from deep in her chest. 

“We'll take care of them, but I have to take care of us too, and it's different,” Parker says. 

Eliot nods. 

“Okay,” he says. “But I get to see 'em first. Not having you trusting a bunch of criminals and thieves,” he adds dryly. 

She hates the laugh that wracks through her from the pit of her stomach. She picks up a still mostly-warm french fry and throws it at Eliot. 

 


End file.
